Illegal Music Downloading

Introduction

Legality to the Companies who provide free downloading service:a. Are companies like LimeWire conducting illegal practices?According to LimeWire and other companies conducting this type of activities, their actions are completely legal. Their position is base on the 'file sharing' premise. They claim that they are not responsible for the file downloaded on to their system. That is why they claim it's legal for them but not be for these individuals whom download music from on to their personal devices.

Companies Position in terms of illegal downloading

LimeWire remains in favor with the P2P, (Peer to Peer), community. Collaboration with Frost-Wire has allowed a wide range of forgiveness for any perception on the cooperation with the music industry. LimeWire has been sued many times by the music industry.

c. How do they obtain their music?LimeWire it's a popular peer-to-peer file-sharing software. It allows computer users to connect via the Internet and directly share electronic files such as songs and movies. One of the factors that will affect your ability to get music through LimeWire is the speed of your downloads.

Legality to the Individual down loading files

Downloading music from companies like LimeWire is illegal to the individual whom downloading them

Of course downloading files is illegal when you do not have a copyrighted of that song or movie. However, songs of the 1950's are completely legal to download as their copyright has expired. The terms, sharing files, and downloading illegal files without copyright are two different things although the actions of people make it a fine line.

How can it get caught?

People are unaware of the laws. Places like Geek Squad for repair and they find music been downloaded to you PC, then Geek squad are obligatedto reported to the department manager by law. This can escalate to more difficult legal issues.

What to expect if get caught?

In the USA, the RIAA sues individuals and they have to sign an agreement saying that you will delete all illegal music and you'll never do it again, usually settled out of court for a couple grand. Sometimes it can go to $750.00 per song. If you are a student living on Campus, the University can take some pretty harsh actions as well, like denied you the privilege of having computer access on campus limiting you to finish your education.

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Network

The main way that students and individuals get their music from is what is called a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Network. These are file sharing programs that allow people to send and receive files from one another. The major P2P networks are Kazaa and Bit Torrent. Kazaa took over to mainstream society when Napster was took offline. It has the same premise of the downloading and sharing music files. All individuals have to do is install the program and run a search for their favorite song and a list comes up with the users that are sharing the file and are ready for download. Bit Torrent has the same principle, but is for the more advanced computer ...